Laws+and+trends

=Laws or trends????=

The main goal of both the natural and human sciences is to formulate laws or theories to explain situations or phenomena using observation, measurement and experiments.


 * But...**

Is it possible to formulate “laws" that explain human behavior? Aren’t we all individuals? Don’t we all have “free will” that allows us to make our own decisions?

consider: Does free will actually exist? Or are we all just biological robots? media type="custom" key="25814502"

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=Is Human Behavior Predictable?=

After exploring some of the difficulties in acquiring accurate data through observation, measurement and polls with regard to human behavior, some of you might say, no. However, there is a fair amount of human behavior that is quite predictable. Can you think of three generalizations about human behavior that you think are true about the majority of human beings?

====The **law of large numbers** explains how we can make fairly accurate predictions about the __probability__ of group behavior. Essentially, the law asserts that random variations in behavior tend to cancel out. With a large enough population, random individuals who may not follow a majority pattern don’t make as much of an impact. This is how predictions about birth rate, marriages and deaths in a country can be made.====

How can these predictions be wrong?
We have to become aware of the difference between a **“law”** and **“trend”**

A **trend** may show the direction that a situation or variable is moving, but there is no explanation for the movement- so it may not be reliable. For example, a company may have made profits for the last three years, but this **alone** does not mean it will profit the following year.

This relates to the ** fallacy of post hoc ergo propter hoc :** //**correlation does not mean causation.**//

//**Let's take a look at the example of the Phillip's Curve**//

**Task: In your notebooks, give two different possible explanations for each correlation below.**

 * 1) Children with low self-esteem tend to do badly at school
 * 2) People who watch violent movies tend to be violent in real life
 * 3) As a country develops economically, birth rates tend to go down
 * 4) Children raised by talkative parents, tend to be talkative themselves
 * 5) Married people tend to be happier than unmarried people

In real world situations, there is a complex ”web” of causal situations that result in any particular situation (or effect). This is why it is so difficult to establish “laws” in the human sciences.
**Consider this example:** A good student sits for an IB History exam and scores a 2. What caused such a poor performance?

It may be impossible to identify one cause for her poor performance. Perhaps there was a combination of factors that resulted in the score. Perhaps altering a single one of the factors above would have resulted in our student scoring her usual score of a 6.
 * Background information: **
 * The question was worded poorly
 * The student chose a question that wasn’t studied in class as thoroughly as the others
 * The student played in a football tournament all the previous weekend
 * The student is a classroom star in this subject an very confident as such
 * She had just broke up with her girlfriend
 * She recently quit smoking

"an individual acts //as if// balancing costs against benefits to arrive at action that maximizes personal advantage."
 * Rational choice theory** is applied in Economics to understand decision making and behavior in economics. The assumption is that

**People act to maximize personal advantage...** do you agree? Rational choice theory does not take into account the "origins, nature, or validity of human motivations (why we want what we want) but instead restrict themselves to examining the expression of //given// and inexplicable wants in specific social or economic environments."

Behavioral Economist Dan Ariely would question this theory. In his book, **//Predictably Irrational,//** he explores the irrationality of our decision making.

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//"Despite our best efforts, **bad or inexplicable decisions are as inevitable as death and taxes **////and the grocery store running out of your favorite flavor of ice cream. They're also just as predictable. Why, for instance, are we convinced that "sizing up" at our favorite burger joint is a good idea, even when we're not that hungry? Why are our phone lists cluttered with numbers we never call? Dan Ariely, behavioral economist, has based his career on figuring out the answers to these questions, and in his bestselling book Predictably Irrational (re-released in expanded form in May 2009), he describes many unorthodox and often downright odd experiments used in the quest to answer this question." -Ted Talks//

===Task: Dan Ariely is a professor of Psychology and Behavioural Economics. He brings the tools and emphasis of one human science to aid in the understanding of yet another (economics). Write in your notebook, an explanation of your understanding of the usefulness of looking to other areas of human (or natural) science to help address observations or questions in one of the following: ===


 * History
 * Economics
 * Geography